1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a printing system, printing method and apparatus using for print a plurality of printers connected via a network to a print requester host, and more particularly, to a printing system, printing method and apparatus automatically selecting a print enabled printer for print without the requester host being conscious of the actual printer.
2. Description of the Related Arts
Up until now, in a network adaptable printing system including printers directly connected to, e.g., Ethernet LAN, there was a need for the host side to define a printer to be output. For this reason, the definition of a printer has hitherto been made on the host definitely designating a path (port) to the printer to be output. 1pd is prevailing as a typical print protocol for such a network adaptable printer. 1pd was originally employed as a UNIX system print protocol although it is recently being supported by other operating systems such as Windows NT than the UNIX system. In case of printing by use of 1pd, BSD system UNIX needs a definite designation, on “/etc/printcap file”, of the host name (IP address) and print queue name (printer name) of the target printer. SVR4 system UNIX and WindowsNT have also similar setting items, so that it would be difficult to perform the 1pd protocol printing by way of a network without setting those items. This means that in case of performing a printing via the network the host needs to recognize the target printer. For example, in the event of 1pd protocol printing in TCP/IP, the printer side information to be recognized by the host can be the printer IP address, etc.
However, in the network adaptable printing system needing the definite setting of the target printer by the host side, in case of addition of a new printer to the network, alteration of information such as printer address, etc., and exclusion of the printer from the network, the host side printer definition is also subjected to addition, alteration and deletion, resulting in an inefficiency from the viewpoint of the network management. Furthermore, in case of attempting to select an idle printer for printing to obviate the printing by a job rich printer in an environment where a plurality of printers lie on the network, the operating status of the printer had to actually be referred to by use of a separately existing network managing soft, i.e., different processing from the print processing had to be made once or more previous to the printing operation.